This invention relates generally to cooking appliances and, more particularly, to heating systems and methods for cooking food items.
Conventional cooking appliances, including ranges and ovens, have a cabinet that defines a cooking cavity within which food items are placed. A plurality of heating elements are positioned within the cooking cavity for cooking the food items. Some conventional cooking appliances use programmed cooking algorithms to cook the food items placed within the cooking cavity. However, conventional cooking appliances may not cook particular food items, such as a pizza, to obtain an optimum result by using a general cooking algorithm designed for all foods. For example, it may desirable to cook the dough portion of the pizza more thoroughly or at a higher temperature than a toppings portion of the pizza. A uniform high cooking temperature used in the general cooking algorithm may thoroughly cook the dough but burn the toppings of the pizza. In addition, frozen pizza and fresh dough pizza may require different cooking algorithms for an optimum cooking result.